


Black Gods and Ivory Boxes

by tepidspongebath



Category: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Study in Emerald AU, Black Peter, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 04:30:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1212730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tepidspongebath/pseuds/tepidspongebath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>D.I. Lestrade is tasked with investigating the murder of Black Peter. After the equally grisly killing of the Bavarian Prince Franz Drago, and with the Restorationists' unrest growing in Albion, he wishes it were otherwise - especially since it once again puts him on the trail of the assassin last known as Sherry Vernet and his accomplice, the rogue doctor John (or maybe James) Watson. He's a Queen's man, and he'd like to think he's a good man too, but it's getting harder to stay both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been languishing on my FF.net account for quite some time, and so here it is, dusted off and, hopefully, progressing. It can be described as a car crash between Neil Gaiman's short story, _Sherlock_ , and _The Adventure of Black Peter_ of ACD canon. I evidently read too many things all at once. Cheers!

Greg Lestrade liked to think that he was a good man. A Queen’s man, yes, that went without saying – he could hardly be a detective inspector of New Scotland Yard without being a Queen’s man – but a good man as well. It should have gone hand in hand, good men in the service of the ruler of Albion, but the truth was that men were men, and they would always have their faults and faulty predilections, even if they were sworn to uphold the law and reign of Victoria Regina. A dark truth, but that was the world for you.

Another dark truth was brewing above his head, storm clouds just like the weather forecast had promised, and Lestrade turned the collar of his coat up against the chill wind and the prospect of rain as he walked away from Tyburn’s Triple Tree. A fresh crop of its sorry fruit hung from the gallows, and the last of them had just stopped her fitful kicking.

A good man, and a Queen’s man. That was what he was, or what he tried to be, and if the five people strung up on the Tree today had had any sense, they’d have tried to do the same. They hadn’t even denied the charges of treason, though one of them had cried at the sentencing, and another had fainted dead away from fear before the cart was pulled out from beneath their feet (they’d had to slap that one awake, no good hanging an unconscious traitor to the crown, the executioner had said). The worst for Lestrade was the one who had tried to be brave.

 _Poor sods,_ he thought, keeping his eyes on the pavement as he passed the gibbets on the other side of the square. A few of those would have to be taken down if they wanted to make room for the ones they’d hanged this morning, and he was just glad that it wasn’t _his_ job to get that done. _Poor stupid sods._

There weren’t many people in the square – apparently the novelty of a good hanging had worn off in the past few months – and Lestrade couldn’t pretend not to notice the person falling into step with him.

“Morning, Dimmock,” he said.

“It’s not a very good one, is it?” The younger man hunched up his shoulders, looked up apprehensively at the gray sky. “Still, five anarchists off the Queen’s streets. I hear there are fourteen more for the Tree tomorrow.”

“That’s what I hear too.” Above them, the iron cages creaked in the wind, and Lestrade tried not to breathe in the stench from them or listen to the crows at their grisly business. Anderson even said that there were a few for the shoggoths in the pits of Newgate prison tonight, but he took everything Anderson said outside of the forensics lab with a grain of salt.

“They _deserve_ it,” said Dimmock, looking over his shoulder at the twisted shape of the Tree. The bodies were still there: they’d be taken down later in the day, when the executioner’s crew was certain that they were all quite thoroughly dead.  “Those lies about Her Majesty – those horrible lies – and spilling royal blood--”

“Not _technically_.” There hadn’t actually been any blood involved, though there had, without question, been murder done.

Dimmock shrugged off the correction.  It made no difference to him. “And they admitted to it, they were proud of what they’d done. I don’t understand it.”

Neither did Lestrade, and he said as much, though his reasons for thinking that were patently different, and he kept those to himself. Dimmock was new to the Yard, relatively unblooded. His eyes still went wide and bright at the thought of serving the Crown, and he still said “Gloriana” and the other names for the Queen that could be pronounced with a human mouth with all the awe and reverence due to the Old Ones and more. He didn’t understand how people could come to hate the royals. Lestrade got that bit –far be it for him to judge what royals did, he was just a copper, but other people would have it that they were given to unforgivable excesses and startling cruelties. What he _didn’t_ understand was why the Restorationists bothered. Maybe things could be better, yes, but they could also get much worse, and since _worse_ often meant a rope necklace and dancing the hemp fandango…

Lestrade found himself nodding in blind agreement to what Dimmock was saying – something about Her Majesty’s upcoming 900-year jubilee – and he would have gone on mutely agreeing with everything on autopilot if the other man hadn’t said something about going back to the Yard.

“You go on ahead,” he told Dimmock, who already had the keys to his squad car out (he had a keychain with the Queen’s coat of arms on it). “I need to pop over to Baker Street for a bit.”

“Baker Street? Is this to do with--?”

“With the Admiral? Yeah.” Admiral Pyotr Halodniy– called Black Peter, a nephew of the White Lady of the Antarctic Fastness – had been found in his rooms, pinned to the wall with a harpoon like a beetle fixed to a card. That this had happened on the heels of Prince Franz Drago’s murder and the uprising in Russia _and_ the trouble at home had the Queen waxing wroth. Lestrade had been assured by his superiors that heads would roll if the crime was not solved, and he had few doubts as to whose head would be doing the rolling. That he might lose his job was the least of it.   

Dimmock had the decency to shudder. “I don’t envy you.”

“ _I_ don’t envy _me._ This sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen.”

“Evil times,” intoned the other man, twiddling his patriotic keychain, “when mankind, in its ignorance, turns on its rulers and protectors. Still,” he went on, suddenly sounding much more normal, “I didn’t think you’d be asking for outside help.”

“I don’t have much of a choice. The higher-ups won’t get their hands dirty” – _so they can’t be blamed if it all goes pear-shaped –_ “and my team’s stumped.” _I’m desperate_ , he thought, and he hoped it didn’t show on his face.

“But this ‘consulting detective’—” The inverted quotation marks were palpable. Dimmock had met him once, and had come away from the experience with a healthy respect for the amateur practitioner, and an even healthier dislike for the man.     

“Look, I don’t like him either. Not much.” Lestrade shrugged. “But Jim Moriarty’s the best chance we’ve got.


	2. Chapter 2

The flat at Baker Street was in its usual state when Lestrade came to call that morning. He had found that once you ignored the chemical whiff coming from the kitchen, 221B Baker Street was actually a pretty ordinary flat, of the sort rented by two ordinary males of the species in Central London. Even the mess was actually an ordinary sort of mess, once you got around the remains of the experiments that Moriarty was working on at the time (the worst he'd seen was a package of thumbs that had clearly come from someone of royal blood – an unacknowledged bastard of a scientific turn who had donated his body to St. Bart’s, Moriarty assured him, but the memory still gave Lestrade a chill) and Sebastian Moran’s rather extensive collection of firearms.

Or at least Lestrade felt a little better thinking of it that way.

He found Moran in the living room once their landlady had showed him in (Moriarty, he’d learned over the years of their acquaintance, never answered the door himself if he could help it). The ex-army man greeted him pleasantly enough, and invited him to share a cup of coffee.

“I should have expected you,” he said, gesturing Lestrade to a chair. “Jim’s been sinisterly cheerful, I should have known there was a case going on. He’s out, but he should be back any moment now. Care to explain why he’s been wandering around the city with a great bloody harpoon?”

“What?”

“It’s what it sounds like.” Sebastian Moran went to the kitchen to get Lestrade a mug. Watching him go, the D.I. couldn’t help feeling grateful that the man hadn’t turned to crime. It was a horrible way to think of people - perhaps one of the occupational hazards of being a policeman - but there was absolutely nothing about Moran that would make him stick out of a line-up. He was _average_ , the sort of bloke a witness would describe as a tall or middling tall, middle-aged (meaning anything from thirty to fifty-five) white male with hair of any shade from blondish brown to brownish blonde. And the man was a crack shot to boot: Lestrade had, on one occasion, seen him shoot a man right between the eyes, from across the street through two plate glass windows on a windy night with another person partially in the way (justified, though they’d had to hush it up afterwards: the man had been a self-confessed murderer, indiscriminate of who or what his victims were as long as they got into the back of his taxi, but Moran shouldn’t have had a gun, and Lestrade shouldn’t have let him fire it, even if it had looked like the cabbie was about to do Moriarty in). “Jim Moriarty commuting – _commuting_ – around London carrying a great, _literally_ bloody harpoon. Mrs. Turner nearly had hysterics when he came home. I’m amazed that he didn’t cause a stampede on the Underground.”

“I thought he preferred taking cabs.”

“Nah, that’s me.” Moran shifted his right shoulder unconsciously as he sat back down after giving the detective his coffee. He had once confided in Lestrade that he disliked the London subway system – _going beneath the earth_ , he’d called it – and the detective inspector suspected it had something to do with his time in Afghanistan. He’d been invalided home, after all, and everyone heard rumors of the wildness of the Afghan people and their strange gods, and the tortures they inflicted in their dark caves on those who would bring them under the right and proper rule of the Old Ones. For a split second it looked like he might say more, perhaps about the Queen’s touch that he’d hinted at when they'd been at his pub one night, but his face took on a closed, faraway look, and Lestrade didn’t press him.

The moment was saved from becoming uncomfortable by Jim Moriarty appearing in the doorway, carrying a harpoon – Lestrade did a double-take before becoming convinced that he was actually seeing the thing – and covered from head to foot in tarry, black ichor.

“Ah, Lestrade!” he said, far too happily than the detective thought was appropriate for the situation. “I was waiting for you to show up. You’ve come from Tyburn, I see.”

“Yeah, I was at Tyburn.” Lestrade willed himself not to ask what the _Hell_ he had been up to – Moriarty had his methods and they got results, far be it for him to question them, and you didn’t just _ask_ people with harpoons why they were covered in blood – but he couldn’t stop himself from uttering the more mundane, “How’d you guess?”

“I didn’t _guess_.” There was a congenial sneer in Moriarty’s voice as he wiped the worst of the stuff off his face and hands with a towel that had been hanging on the back of Moran’s chair. “You always get a droopy, morose look after you’ve been to a hanging. I can tell.” He shrugged on a scarlet dressing gown, quite careless of the mess, and sat on the sofa, bouncing a little on the cushions as he settled himself. Moran gave him an arch look, as if to say that he was damned if the cleaning was going to come out of his share of the rent. “Though in this case, it was a simple matter of following the news. I was interested, you see – I had a hand in one of the cases. The Russian poisoner with the golden pince-nez, I wonder if you noticed her? But I wouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t, that was all very hush-hush. I can only talk about it now since it was so _successfully_ brought to a conclusion.”

The detective inspector remembered that a pair of spectacles had been taken off one of the girls before they slipped the noose around her neck, and shuddered.

“Yes, she was quite the cold-blooded little thing. Out for revenge, she said. A _rache._ ” Moriarty smiled in that disconcerting way of his. “You remember that, of course.”

Lestrade bristled. As if he needed to be reminded of the Prince Drago case – _A Study in Emerald_ , Moran had called it, and it was a good job he’d kept it off that blog of his. He stood, making as if to leave. “Look, I’m not here for cold cases, Moriarty. If a gibe and a bloody horror sideshow is all you’ve got for me, I’m taking the case elsewhere.”

“ _There is no elsewhere._ ” The words cracked in the air like a thunderbolt from an angry god, and they made Lestrade fall back onto his seat. It said something about Sebastian Moran’s nerve that all he did was blink. “And you know it, Detective Inspector,” Moriarty continued in a far milder tone. “And I’ll have you know that that wasn’t an empty gibe, oh no.” He tilted his head a little to one side, a movement that Lestrade had always found to be vaguely reptilian. “If you’ll care to let me explain?”


	3. Chapter 3

“I’m sorry,” said Jim Moriarty, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “I seem to have gotten into Sebastian’s habit of telling stories from the wrong end – you see what he does on his blog. Awkward, isn’t it?”

“You could say that.” Lestrade glanced at Moran, who gave him a don’t-blame-me-I’m-just-the-flatmate look.

“Or at least it is in conversation. Let’s start over. Tell me, what do you know of the _Gloria Scott_?”

“The _Gloria Scott_?” Lestrade was familiar enough with the consulting detective’s methods that he knew better than to ask out loud if the ship was connected to the case. Of course it was. And he’d thought that the one good thing about this case was that it couldn’t possibly get any worse. “She’s a prisoner ship. A transporter. Or she was before she disappeared.”

“Yes, and what else?”

 _What else,_ indeed. There were mad rumors going around that Restorationists had commandeered her, converted her into a floating sanctuary, a base of operations of sorts. It actually seemed possible to Lestrade that that was where they were broadcasting that news program of theirs from, but his credulity drew the line when Anderson started spouting that rubbish about the _Gloria Scott_ being made into a battleship that they were going to use to find and destroy ancient R’lyeh.

“Not much,” he said finally, turning the coffee mug Moran had given him in uncomfortable half circles. “Nothing you could call _concrete._ I honestly wouldn’t have paid attention to it if Victor Trevor hadn’t been on board when she vanished.”

“It’s a sad day for law enforcement when its brightest officers only pay attention to the news when there’s a criminal element involved.”

“Well, that’s our job, isn’t it?” Though he was used to Moriarty’s decidedly less than flattering opinion of the police force, it didn’t mean Lestrade had to like it, and his tone was arch and sharp.

Moriarty waved it off. “Anyway, that sweet little ship. It’s all true, what they say about her. Oh, maybe not about R’lyeh, only an _idiot_ would believe the stuff about R’lyeh, but the rest of it’s fairly accurate. Do you know that if Victor Trevor comes ashore anywhere in the whole wide world he’s to be shot and brought to Her Majesty, in that order?”

“I didn’t think he was still alive.”

“Oh, you just didn’t _think_.” The consulting detective leapt up from the sofa – he was a small man but given to sudden bursts of movement – and snatched up his harpoon again. “The _Gloria Scott_ was Black Peter’s--”

“Admiral Pyotr Halodniy,” corrected Lestrade automatically.

“Yes, yes, yes, thirty-seventh in line to the throne of the Antarctic Fastness, nephew – or some sort of relation anyway, always hard to tell with royalty – to the White Lady, ruler of the same, commander of the _Sea Unicorn_ …him. Black Peter. He was given that name for a reason, Detective Inspector, and he _liked_ it. You could even say he relished it. So have some respect for the dead, and let me use his name.” He punctuated this with a twirl of his harpoon: Lestrade didn’t see it fit to argue the point anymore. “Black Peter,” Moriarty continued, absently tossing the harpoon from hand to hand (Lestrade wished he wouldn’t do that, and he was pretty sure that Moran felt the same way, going by the rather anxious way he was watching his flatmate’s hands), “was after the _Gloria Scott_.”      

“Is that what you think?” It was Moran who asked. He’d abandoned even the pretence of still being interested in his breakfast.

“No, that’s what I _know_. There’s a difference. What I _think_ is that he was killed to stop him from finding her. It was only a matter of time, after all, and the _Gloria Scott_ wouldn’t have had a hope in hell if he’d caught her at sea – and she’s not something the Restorationists can afford to lose.”

“Restorationists _._ ” Saying the word aloud left a bad taste in Lestrade’s mouth. He didn’t see how they thought they were making things better for anyone. More than anything he just wished they’d _stop_. He remembered the gibbets and the Triple Tree, and promptly wished he hadn’t.

“Tired of the word, are you?” asked Moriarty. “I remember that you couldn’t bear to hear it spoken just about a year ago. And Sebastian here didn’t even know what they were. We’re all considerably better educated now, aren’t we?”

“So they’ve done another murder.” Moran sounded grim, and Lestrade saw him shift his shoulder unconsciously. He wondered if he was imagining Moran holding that particular part of him a little more stiffly in the recent past.

“ _Obviously_. That nasty business in Russia with the Czar Unanswerable has only made them bolder. The only questions in this case are who did it, and how.” Quite abruptly, Moriarty dropped the harpoon, and began to pace, hands clasped behind his back. “I’ve been working on the _how._ Black Peter was speared to death in his hotel suite, pinned like a bug with a weapon from his own collection, with the point of the harpoon driven a good foot into the wall. I’ve been trying to recreate that. Of course, no creature can properly approximate Their anatomy, but I’ve had some pretty fair substitutes. There was a dead bear the other day, and St. Bart’s very generously donated a human cadaver. The last I tried was a giant squid fresh from the docks. I don’t flatter myself when I say I’m probably a teensy bit stronger than the average man, but I couldn’t do what the killer did. Not even with practice.” And he spun on his heel to face them. He made a rather sinister picture, looking as he did, covered in the ichor, dressed in red, and the expression on his face suggesting that he took his failure at replicating the murder as a grievous personal offence.

“Ergo,” he said, “the killer was either someone extremely proficient with a harpoon– a professional, one of those whalers, maybe – or, perhaps, and I think this is more likely, he was something more than a man.”

“What do you mean ‘more’?” Lestrade had a pretty shrewd idea what it meant, but he hoped he was wrong.

“You know very well what I mean. You’d need more than human strength to drive a harpoon through a living body – any living body, never mind royalty – and a foot through mortar and concrete after that. And you don’t need to be more than an eighth Old One to be that strong. Being of noble blood doesn’t always make for noble character, and you know how some of these half breeds are. Malcontents. Dissenters. So very _bitter_ that their arses will never warm the throne.

“Now the question is who it was exactly. Your police report says that Black Peter had set out drinks before he died – that says he knew his killer, was even expecting him. And the drinks, you say, were hard rum – that, since I’m sure he had more choices than that at his disposal, says he was expecting a sailor, maybe even someone from the _Sea Unicorn’s_ crew.”

“Are you sure?” As was so often the case, the detective inspector found himself dumbfounded while on the receiving end of Moriarty’s deductions. On his own, he’d gotten as far as Admiral Halodniy – oh, all right, Black Peter – expecting company, but he’d had to admit that he was stumped beyond that.

“That’s offensive, Lestrade, of course I’m sure.” That he was piqued showed clearly on Moriarty’s expressive face. “Now, I have a lead – an informant, if you will – who says that he knows something of the matter.”

“That’s – that’s great, that’s _brilliant_.” Lestrade began to rummage in his pockets for his notebook and pen. “If you could give me a name and address--” 

“Not. So. Fast,” Moriarty cut him off. “The man is cautious, rightly so, and it is likely that he is being watched. Visit him officially, and he’ll probably end up dead himself. You wouldn’t want that on your conscience, would you? No, I didn’t think so. But I still need your help, detective inspector.”

“And here I was thinking I needed _yours_.”

“Well, you do. But you’ll make a better agent than most of Scotland Yard, even if you can be a little dim.”

“Try to play nicely, won’t you, boys” interjected Moran, just as Lestrade was opening his mouth to make an angry retort. “Both of you,” he added, meaningfully.

Jim Moriarty rolled his eyes. “I need you to meet this man. Captain Basil. He sailed on the _Sea Unicorn_ on her last voyage. I’d go myself, but I might be recognized, and then everything would go to pieces. Even sending Sebastian would be a risk.” He swallowed. “I have reason to believe our old friend Rache is involved. You remember. The actor calling himself Sherry Vernet.”

Lestrade’s mouth opened in an ‘O’ equal parts shock and dismay. The man had murdered Prince Franz Drago – or he’d at least led him to his death, a John (or maybe James) Watson had done the actual killing – and had gotten away quite cleanly afterwards.

“Yes, him. I rather foolishly revealed myself to him during our last encounter, and he’d see through any disguise I cared to put on now. You, however…you might escape his notice.”

“What do I need to do?” The smart thing – the _right_ thing – to do would be to report back to the Yard, tell them who was involved, leave it to the people whose division it actually belonged to. But he wasn’t going to do that, was he, even if his mouth went dry at the thought of this Rache. The man had done murder and gotten away with it _on his watch_ , and he was damned if he was going to let it happen again. He was twice, maybe even thrice-damned, if he was going to let anyone _else_ bungle the investigation. Moriarty was maddening, but, possibly against his better jud gment and common sense, Lestrade trusted him. Or at least he had faith in his abilities, which, in this particular case, was tantamount to trusting the man, even if he was more than a little batshit crazy.

The consulting detective shot him a look that was a clear _Didn't I just tell you?_ “Meet our Captain Basil," he repeated somewhat testily. "He’ll be at the Musgrave gin house in the Rookery--”

“ _The Rookery of St. Giles?_ ” The mug dropped from Lestrade’s suddenly nerveless fingers. He was barely aware of trying to help Moran sponge up the mess on the table. “Jim, people know I’m a copper – I won’t last half an hour in there.”

Moriarty shrugged, a gesture which involved his shoulders, arms, hands, and somehow even his knees. “If it’s too much to ask, I won’t be the one who has to explain why Black Peter’s killer is still running free as a butterfly.”

“I could go,” volunteered Moran, removing the coffee-soaked towel – the same one Moriarty had wiped his hands on, Lestrade was intensely sorry for whoever did the actual housekeeping for these two – from the table. “I’m pretty sure--”

“Try to use that brain of yours, I know it works tolerably well on some days. He knows you, too, Sebastian. He’s _seen_ you up close, and with me, how do you think that’s going to go down?”

“Sweet saints.” Lestrade took a deep breath, grit his teeth, and committed his soul to whatever god could find it. It seemed like he didn’t have much of a choice. “Okay. Tell me more. I’ll see if I can manage it.”

“I knew you’d come around.” Moriarty beamed at him. “It’s just on the outskirts of the Rookery, you know. It’s practically on Shaftesbury Avenue. Captain Basil will be there at six o’clock tonight. I haven’t actually met him, we’ve exchanged emails and texts, and he knows me as Sam Culverton-Smith. You’re to meet him at Musgrave’s, and take down what he has to say down _to the punctuation marks._ I’m sure it’ll all be useful to you.”

“Right.”

“And I would appreciate it if you sent me a text when it was all done.”

“Sure. I’ll do that.” When he was safely away from the Rookery, of course. Flash a fairly new cell phone around in there, and you’d deserve what you got. “This Captain Basil, how will I know him?”

“Oh. It’s actually a question of how he’ll know _you_.” The consulting detective looked around the room as if he was searching for inspiration. “That box on the mantelpiece, that little ivory one – yes, that one, no, don’t touch it, it’s rather delicate – that’s distinctive enough. I’ll tell him to expect it. Hand it to him when you meet him, and tell him I couldn’t come myself, _so_ sorry. And I’ll wrap it up for you before you go, I know what you keep in your pockets, you’ll batter it to bits. Sebastian, give me a sheet of newspaper, no, I don’t _care_ that you’re still reading it, it’s rubbish anyway.”


	4. Chapter 4

The moon was hanging fat and heavy in the sky when Lestrade set out. It wasn’t quite full yet – a waxing gibbous, he thought the phase was called – but it filled the streets with a pale pink light all the same. In school, Lestrade had been taught that the moon used to be a sort of whitish yellow until the coming of the Old Ones and the fall of Rome, but it was hard to believe it had ever been anything but a comfortable crimson, despite the somewhat realistic yellow lights in the sky they put in the better class of period movies.

He had Moriarty’s little ivory box in his right coat pocket, still wrapped in a page of the morning paper that Moran hadn’t managed to get back. Lestrade hadn’t bothered to unwrap the thing. It all seemed very cloak and dagger, this arrangement – couldn’t Moriarty have sent his contact a photograph and left Lestrade to supply the necessary ID? – but then the consulting detective was a man known for his peculiarities. His contacts, Lestrade figured, might well share the same stretch of normality.

And the Rookery. He tried not to think about the place even as he approached it. The Rookery of St. Giles was more than just a bad neighborhood. Moran had described the place – handy thing, that blog of his – as a cancerous patch of lawlessness on the face of the city, and Lestrade was inclined to agree.  He was going on foot because no form of public transportation came near it, and only a complete idiot would leave a car parked in the area. There was no hiding the fact that he didn’t belong there, so he hadn’t bothered with a disguise. As for his being a cop, he couldn’t help that either or that some people could just _tell_ you were the police, and he’d just have to wrap things up before anybody caught on.

It was a damn fool thing to do – a younger policeman of Dimmock’s fanatic ilk had been fatally stabbed there last week just, as far as anyone could tell, for looking out of place – but it was for Queen and country, and he had to hope that that would be enough to keep him safe. Mostly it wasn’t, he knew that, but he could hope.

The Musgrave gin house was _not_ practically on Shaftesbury Avenue, and Lestrade cursed Moriarty roundly as he went deeper into the Rookery. When he finally found the place, he was far enough into St. Giles that no-one would report his murder if it happened, and he was swearing steadily, in his head ( _it made him feel better, damn it, fuck this fucking business, shut up and let him curse, bollocks and shit and arse_ ), when he sat down at the bar.

He looked around as the barkeeper made his slow, rather reluctant way towards his new customer. It was a small place, only clean if you _really_ stretched your definition of the word, and there was just one other person there, sitting at a badly lit table by stairs that Lestrade guessed led up to private rooms on the first floor. The man had a glass in front of him, but he didn’t seem to be interested in it.

The barkeeper didn’t so much ask what he wanted as grunt and glower to get the message across. Lestrade asked for a pint of Shoggoth’s Old Peculier, and the man shoved a grubby glass in front of him. He paid for it in change (he hadn’t brought much money with him – if he was going to be robbed he was damned if whoever did it was going to have the satisfaction of good takings), and, for luck, tapped a finger on the image of the Queen, awe-inspiring and dreadful, on one of the coins before he went over to talk to the man in the corner.    

“Mind if I have a seat?” Lestrade asked, holding his drink a little gingerly. He could _feel_ the grit on the glass.

“Go ahead.” The man’s tone was friendly enough, if a little wary. Given where they were, Lestrade didn’t blame him. He looked to be shorter than the D.I., and he wore his nominally blonde hair in a military cut.

“What a place, eh?”

“I’ve seen worse.”

“Been abroad, then?”

“You actually don’t have to go very far.”

“Mhm.” Lestrade took a sip of his drink, decided it was a bad idea, and put it down. “I’m looking for a Captain Basil.”

“Ah, no, you’ve got it wrong. I’m John Watson. _Captain_ John Watson, if that’s any consolation to you, but I’m not who you’re looking for.”

“Oh.” The detective inspector made to rise, quick as he could without actually leaping up. Shit. _Shit_. . Shoggoths take him, there were some names that you didn’t forget, even if they were from case files that had been snatched from your desk and re-labelled as classified by orders from on high, and there were names that raised the hairs on the back of your neck even if they were as common as dirt. John Watson. Apparently it wasn’t James after all. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.” 

If he walked away now, _now_ , if he managed to keep his face blank and his heart from pounding out of his chest, he could phone for backup as soon as he left the gin house, never mind that he was in the Rookery, some things were worth the risk, and maybe, just maybe, he might get out of this alive, but the man who was, in all probability, Franz Drago’s murderer waved him back to his seat, and Lestrade wasn’t sure how much he’d be able to do (or how dead he’d be) if he bolted.

“’S no problem.” John Watson knocked back his drink, stood from the table. “The man you want’s upstairs. He said to expect, well, not you, but somebody. Come on, I’ll take you up.”


	5. Chapter 5

Watson signalled to the barkeeper, indicating by pointing that they were going upstairs. The man shrugged his indifference, and went back to wiping at glasses with a greasy rag (you couldn’t have said he was _cleaning_ them, not with that thing – at most he was spreading the dirt around more evenly).

“Well, that’s Reggie,” Watson told the detective inspector as they left the table. “He’s never been quite the same since the cat got his tongue. I, um, didn’t catch your name?”

“Greg – son,” said Lestrade, making the split-second decision to borrow the name off one of the other detectives at the Yard. He hoped that the pause between the syllables had been short enough to escape notice. He certainly wasn’t about to make an ass of himself by repeating the name with more conviction. Let the man think he had a speech impediment of some sort. “Sam Culverton-Smith sent me.”

“Ah.” Watson gave him a sharp look as he stood to the side of the entrance to the narrow, walled stairway. “After you.”

The steps were wooden, and they creaked as Lestrade went up, dragging his feet. It was only too obvious that there was no way he could make a run for it with John Watson behind him in that dim, narrow space, and it was likely that this was the only way out as well – buildings in this neighbourhood were not likely to have fire escapes. Looking up, he could just make out the door at the top, and it looked ominously sturdy. The only positive thing he could think was that the first floor wasn’t all that high up, and if the room they were headed to had a big enough window, he could jump and probably limp away, if the opportunity to do so should arise. Probably.

They were perhaps three quarters of the way up when a better idea presented itself, and Lestrade’s hand went to his pocket, slowly, and, he hoped, unobtrusively just to see if he could reach his phone, and maybe, just maybe hit the speed dial for his department, for Sally Donovan, for Anderson, for anybody. It was not a good move. It was not a good move at all.

For one thing, instead of his phone, his hand encountered Moriarty’s little newspaper-wrapped box. For another, before he even had time to remember that, yes, he had moved his mobile to make room for that box, damn and blast, there was a metallic noise behind him, and he could feel the muzzle of a gun pressed against the small of his back.  

“Don’t,” said John Watson quietly. “Please. Don’t.”

Lestrade took his hand from his coat. “It wasn’t anything,” he said, raising his other hand too, slowly, fingers spread to demonstrate beyond doubt that they were empty. “I don’t have anything.”

It was close to babbling, for all that he managed it calmly enough. He swallowed as he remembered the crime scene at Lauriston Gardens, the walls all spattered with gore like a kid’s finger painting done all in green. He wondered if this Captain Basil he was supposed to meet was still alive at all, and what state he might be in if he wasn’t. “I’m not armed,” he heard himself saying on autopilot.

“Sorry. Can’t be too careful around here.” The gun didn’t move.

“I guess you can’t.” If Lestrade had been one of those cops in the movies, he would have whipped around, shot Watson with his own gun, kicked him down the stairs, and gone on to bust down the door, brandishing his newly-acquired firearm to make the occupants quaver in fear at the force of Albion law. _I’d probably even have a bloody witty quip to round it off._ But he put his hands on the back of his head, went on when Watson told him to, and told himself that those idiot coppers in the movies wouldn’t last five minutes in real life. All the same, he wished he could be braver. Gods knew he _ought_ to be.  

“You’ll have to open that,” Watson said when they reached the door. “I’d rather you knocked, but he never answers the door if he can help it.”

The detective inspector tried, and he would have felt better about there being someone on the other side who was still able to answer doors if he hadn’t known that Watson had had an accomplice, someone who’d lured the victim in. Perhaps they were taking turns. The knob turned easily, but the door wouldn’t budge.

“Push harder. It sticks in the damp.”      

“My flat’s the same.” It was an idiotic thing to say, but Lestrade was just relieved to still be talking. That was a good thing, because maybe, just maybe, he’d be allowed to go on talking for a while longer yet. “Thought of complaining to the landlord?” 

“Reggie’d just glare at me. Anyway, we won’t be here long. Go on.”

He didn’t have much of a choice, did he? Lestrade gave the door a shove, and when that didn’t work, he put his shoulder against it and really _pushed_. It swung open, and he staggered into a small room that smelled faintly of mold and fairly stank of tobacco. The source of the latter was a clay pipe being smoked by the room’s only occupant, a sailor – no, a captain – sitting at the table facing the door, or, rather, hunched over it, leaning as he was on his skinny elbows. And he was undoubtedly a sea captain: he had on a captain’s hat pulled low over his eyes, a jacket that looked to Lestrade to be distinctly salt-stained, and, underneath that, a worn blue jumper that could hardly be taken as anything but nautical. In front of him, there was a plate containing the remains of a dinner that had consisted mostly of fish ( _there were the bones, see?_ ), and at his elbow was a half-empty bottle of hard rum and a glass into which the bottle had presumably been emptied. He seemed disinterested in the new arrivals, though Lestrade was certain that he gave him a look from under his cap before continuing to puff away on his pipe.

The other things in the room, then. Lestrade’s quick glance brought up two more chairs at the table, another chair in the corner, a cardboard box on top of that, and a single window in the wall facing the street. It was, he noted, much too narrow to afford an escape route, and John Watson hurrying in after him quashed any further thoughts in that direction for the time being.

“It’s not—” Watson began, but the other man cut him off.         

“Not who I was hoping for, no. It was a long shot anyway, I told you we were just passing the time.” His voice surprised Lestrade. It was deep, and it went in through Lestrade’s ears, down his spine, and straight to his toes, and it was, well, _cultured_. Hell, he’d even go so far as to say it was downright posh. Quite suddenly, the man didn’t seem to be a sailor at all. He tapped the contents of his pipe out onto the dinner plate, and straightened up in his seat, somehow dropping the act entirely with that small gesture.  “Hello, Detective Inspector. I’d say that I hoped Jim Moriarty didn’t put you to too much trouble, but, obviously, he has.”

“I’d say that, yeah.” Lestrade took a deliberate step forward. He was not about to be cowed by a stranger showing off his apparent omniscience, he put up with enough of that from Moriarty, thank you very much, there were plenty of ways for a person to find out who he was, and his association with the consulting detective was no secret, even if the higher-ups mostly turned a blind eye to it. Although, he had to admit that he was fully prepared to be cowed by Watson training the gun on him again ( _a Browning, by the look of it, one of those military-issue things that meant business_ ), and he put up his hands accordingly.

“We’ve met before, though I don’t know if you remember,” said the man at the table, smooth as butter, and as rich and heady as melted chocolate, incongruous as that was with the rest of this place. “Well, I say ‘met’. You held my head up over a toilet bowl in a public restroom to help me vomit, and told me that the way I was going, I’d end up either in Newgate or the Rookery.” He took off his cap, unselfconsciously ruffled his dark curls with long, pale fingers, and smiled at Lestrade, sharp and sardonic, and, if the circumstances had been just the tiniest bit different, the D.I. might have given in to the temptation to punch that look off of his face. “And here we are.”


End file.
